Weekly Photo Challenge: Balance

By Jenn Mishra

I recently published an ebook on a symbol that helps me lead a well-balanced life. The symbol was the cairn – a man-made stack of stones that provides navigation on hikes. I talked a lot about how the symbol of these stacks reminds me to balance my life.

This week, the theme is to:

Photograph Balance

This week’s challenge is an opportunity to look for balance in your life. This balance can be symbolic or actual balance. The cairns are really both. Stones literally balanced on top of each other, but also a symbol of balance in my life.

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Cairns speak to me of balance, but there are many other examples of balance in our lives. This dancer is perfectly balanced on her toes. It doesn’t matter that she only balanced there for a brief moment while I took this photo.

Brianna balances on her toes for this image.

You could take a photographic approach to this challenge. Photographers often talk about balancing their image. This means that something visually heavy on one side of the frame needs something on the other side of the frame of equal equivalent weight.

This image of a man from Trinidad wouldn’t work quite so well if his friend wasn’t balancing the frame. Looking in the opposite directions also helps as well.

This image of a man from Trinidad posing for a photo is balanced by his friend. It helps that the two men are wearing similar colors against the orange background and that his friend is looking away from the camera – the opposite direction.

Balance doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing needs to be on both sides of the frame, just something of equal visual weight balancing the visual scales. The tree in this image balances the red barn.

Barn on the Colorado plains is balanced by the tree and shadows.

Anything defying gravity with a chance of tipping over will work for this challenge. Within balance there is a weightlessness and ease that comes with defying gravity.

Riding a bike is a perfect example of balance and there are a lot of other activities (sports, yoga, balancing a ball on your nose, etc.) that show physical balance in action. Athletes, acrobats, and dancers often show their ability to keep their balance when the rest of us would simply fall over! Their feats of balance are awe-inspiring.

Balance is integral to many sports such as bike riding.

Art can also be about balance. Calder’s Flamingo in Chicago always strikes me as heavy and graceful all at the same time.

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Balancing on the head of a pin is a saying that means a difficult feat – one courting disaster. We admire those who can balance and we are amazed when we find balance in nature. This week is the opportunity to look for these awe-inspiring moments or find the balance in our everyday life.

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Share your posts in the Comments below or share with the tag #photoyogabalance for a chance to have your photo featured on PhotoYoga.

My ebook Cairns: Symbols of a Well-Balanced Life is available on Kindle.

I’m using my Random Inspiration Generator to choose the challenge each week. Use it if you want more frequent inspirations!

This post is sponsored by PhotoYoga.

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